


The First Birthday After

by car_yl



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27250651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/car_yl/pseuds/car_yl
Summary: Harry visits a grave. Lara and Molly meet him there. Harry's reached an "I'll do my crying in the rain stage".
Relationships: Harry Dreden/Lara Raith, Harry Dresden/Karrin Murphy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	The First Birthday After

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "It's My Birthday Too" fanfic contest October, 2020.

The First Birthday After

It’s a bright morning in late spring as I stand by the grave in Graceland. There’s still snow in the shaded areas of the city and here under each of the old growth trees in the cemetery. The pain in my chest is still as sharp as it was the day we closed the grave those many months ago. And i have a wedding to help ‘plan’. My stomach roils at the thought. I place my hand on the headstone that read, “THEY DEFENDED CHICAGO” in a token of temporary farewell.

I ran a hand down my face, wiping away the slowly trickling tears. It wasn’t the flood it had been but I still always shed a few when I thought about how she died. I turned to go and found two women standing just past the end of the grave; my fiancé’ and one of my bosses, the Winter Lady.

“What are you doing here, Harry?” Lara asked with a hint of pique’ in her tone.

“It’s her birthday and Memorial Day is just around the corner. I came to pay tribute without a crowd.” I answered.

“We have a lunch to attend today.” She reminded me.

I opened my duster to reveal the silver gray suit I was sporting. “Appropriate enough?” my tone edged with a little knife edge of challenge.

Lara heaved a sigh and turned away, “I’ll wait in the car. How did you get here?”

“By the ways,” I replied.

“Good, then I don’t have to arrange someone to pick up your ‘company car’.” She stalked off shooting Molly a withering glance as she passed.

I say it was Molly standing at the grave with a small bouquet of daisies because she’d chosen to wear a glamour that made her look her age and revealed her hair’s original golden color rather than the white of winter the Lady would have worn. Also, her eyes were their original round pupiled blue rather than the cat-eyed orbs that belonged to the Lady.

I nodded toward the daisies, “Those were her favorites.”

“I remember,” she said softly. She walked forward and placed a hand on my arm. “Glad to see you continue to wear my gift. Who does it irk?”

I snorted, “Everybody.” Molly smiled.

“How is it going with her?” She tilted her head toward the white town-car Lara was now occupying.

I signed heavily, “It’s progressing.” I looked in Molly’s eyes because a) I could, we’d already soul gazed and her new status hadn’t changed her enough to cause a new one, yet; and b) I wanted her to see the emptiness that still existed within. 

“Oh Harry, isn’t it any better?” she tightened her grip on my arm.

“Not yet,” I said, dropping my gaze to the flowers. I reached for them. “Thanks for these and for remember her birthday.” 

Molly released my arm and placed the flowers in my hand. I turned, knelt and placed them at the foot of the stone next to the sprigs of rosemary with the little tag that read simply, “Karrin” that I’d placed there an hour ago.

“Lara won’t like it if you stain the knee of that nice suit.” Molly’s tone dripped sarcasm.

“No, she won’t,” I couldn’t even force emotion into my voice as I stood and brushed at my knee. It was a little damp but there wouldn’t be a stain. I’d starting registering those kinds of irrelevant details now because of my new ‘status’ as a political pawn who needed to NOT upset the women I now served.

“How can she do this to you?” Molly ground out. “She know’s you don’t love her, that you’re still in love with Karrin.”

“What I feel is irrelevant to the job I’m expected to do.” I answered still looking at the flora we’d added to the just greening grass covering what people in Chicago now called the Battle of the Bean Memorial grave. Besides Karrin’s there were the photos of nearly a thousand people in the casket that lay under the soil of that plot. I still remember the sensation of each of those deaths as well as the devastating emptiness hers caused in me.

“Harry?”

“Hmm,” always eloquent, me.

“I’m still trying to get you out of this. It’s not too late.” Molly reached for my hand. I didn’t reach back. Instead, I stuck my hands in my pants pockets, and turned toward Lara’s car. 

“Don’t bother Molly. As long as I can use these connections to keep Maggie safe, I don’t care either way.”

“Harry, you’re still a young man as wizards go. You could have love again.” Hope, she was trying to provide me hope. “You could even make it work with… her,” used a thumb toward the car this time, “if you’d just …” She didn’t finished the sentence.

“Not happening anytime soon, Molls.”

“Why Harry? Why? Why can’t you at least try to .. make your life easier? I’m sure Marcone could help you find someone to ease- um, substitute for- “

“Really Molly?” I quirked a wry smile at her, “You think everybody and their brother hasn’t already suggested that? Including Marcone?”

“Well, have you? Tried, I mean?” 

I shrugged. “Once.” Still with my eyes on Lara’s car. She hadn’t emerged to express her impatience yet. So I didn’t move.

“It didn’t work, Harry?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Cause I couldn’t go through with it. I just ended up walking out leaving the poor girl completely terrified Marcone would be angry.” I flicked a brief glance at her face. “I made sure he wasn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?” She sounded so puzzled and pained and well, sorry for me. I really didn’t want her pity or sympathy, but she is my boss in her other persona.

I sighed deeply, “I finally figured that out, Molls. It’s the real reason I never could bring myself to look at you with, well, carnal interest; the reason I never really fell for Luccio; the reason I've always said no to Lara,” I paused before finally finishing the sentence, “because no one else is Karrin.”

I heard Molly gasp as I finally started walking in the direction of my future ‘wife’.


End file.
